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E-COMMERCE
10x everything is outdated. Today we are about to 17x your store revenue (Sorry Grant…)
This case study, shared by Mike L. Lewandowski, is mostly regarding how to boost an e-commerce store’s conversions. Mike also shared the name of the store, so if you like what you read you can check out BlueOffer7’s store to see their results in action.
Background: The store sells activewear and swimwear products at competitive prices. The brand focuses on frequently launching of new styles and offerings from its drop-ship suppliers.
Results achieved: 17x increase in revenue, up to $328k. ROAS at 2.6.
What they did:
- Improved the consistency of call-to-action buttons, as well as fonts and logo harmonisation across the site.
- Added a search feature.
- Customized the checkout with a logo in the brand’s native colours.
- Added a social pop-up that informs the users about other customers’ purchases.
- Highlighted the FS policy in a top bar.
- Enabled Shopify multi-currency.
- Implemented a sticky Add to Cart button.
Afterwards, Mike talks about what they did on the media buying side. To keep it short, they were overspending as they tested 20 new products per week to try and find the working offer. So, they shifted the focus of their media buying efforts towards re-engaging with and remarketing to past customers.
That is all. The CRO practices they implemented look very simple, so, if you haven’t tested them yet, go ahead…
CORONAVIRUS
We know they’re already bombarding you buuut…
… there have been some updates that we can’t ignore regarding our industry.
Conferences
Affiliate Summit Europe: As we can see from this email, the Affiliate Summit Euro is still scheduled to take place in June, although they’re taking all the necessary safety measures to protect attendees, sponsors, exhibitors and everybody involved.
DMIEXPO Spring 2020: A digital and affiliate marketing conference, based in Israel, was expected to take place on May 24 and 25 but has been postponed. Their next event will be in November.
Advertising
Following Facebook updates, Google is banning ads for medical masks that are proliferating online. Although, this ban does not extend to other items such as hazmat suits and sanitizers.
Travel
The USA’s total number of coronavirus cases rose to 1,366 yesterday, prompting Donald Trump to declare that the country will block flights coming from 26 European countries for the next 30 days. However, this restriction only stops people, not goods, and it does not apply to the UK.
Fraud
Several organizations have built online dashboards to help people keep track of the COVID-19, but hackers found a way to use these dashboards to inject malware into computers. They’re stealing users’ info such as user names, passwords, cc numbers, and other info stored in your browser.
How to protect: Do not download any application that offers to “keep you informed about the coronavirus”.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. We’ll end this on a sweet note, with China stating that it is past the worst of the coronavirus. The Hubei province registered single-digit cases for the first time.
SPONSORED
🧾 Cheatsheet for 6 effective ways to scale Facebook campaigns from IAmAttila
If you ever ran more than two FB campaigns, you’ve noticed how volatile it can be. It was the same for IAmAttila when the agency side of his business was getting dangerously close to falling below the 3x ROAS threshold he agreed on with an e-com store.
So it was crunch time. Testing and retesting everything that’s out there when it comes to scaling while keeping a good ROAS. Some things didn’t work… But some things worked well and are not the go-to for all of Attila’s e-com campaigns on FB.
- Take your best ads that work at a small scale.
- Apply ALL these tips at once (different products mean some are more effective than others).
- Cut underperforming ads when your Add To Cart (ATC) cost is not close to your average expected ATC needed (don’t wait only for sales).
That’s it! Whether you are solo or with a team, you should check it out.
Download the cheatsheet for free right here.
Lessons learnt after spending $6M on Google Ads
Nick Lafferty shared four lessons he learnt while scaling his Google Ad campaigns to nearly $6M in spend over the last year. Let’s see what he had to share:
Creatives are everything
No surprises there, right? No matter what platform we’re talking about, this one key note holds true. There’s so much machine learning and AI built into digital platforms these days, and they’re trained to look for early engagement signals.
The key here is to always test new creatives and find what works best for your business. Heck, what didn’t work last year might be the best performer this time. Tap into and analyze what’s working well in highly-competitive niches like auto or mortgage industries. They breed insane amounts of innovation.
The house always rules
It doesn’t matter whether you’re for or against automated bidding strategies, here’s the thing:
Google optimizes at the search query level. All third-party solutions can only optimize at the keyword level.
What does that mean? Imagine someone is searching for new windows for their house. Your keyword is “home windows”, and that keyword is what bid management tools train their algorithms for. They’ll need to have a year’s worth of keyword performance data in order to train their systems.
Google looks at the specific search terms, which could be “home windows for the elderly” or even “home windows and doors”. Those are two very different search terms. Google knows this; bid management systems don’t.
Tapping into the hidden gem
Creating great video ads is a complex, time intensive and expensive process. That’s why the barrier to entry into YouTube Ads is higher. But that’s also why YouTube Ads are a hidden gem.
There’s tons of room for optimization in this untapped reserve, and if you nail the right creative you can get crazy good scale. You might end up paying 5x less bids for your competitors’ search keywords using YouTube.
Here’s the key: Use Custom Intent Audiences for your competitors’ keywords. It targets people on YouTube who searched those keywords on Google in the last seven days.
Gmail Ads to scale
Gmail can give you an additional 10–20% conversions per month, although bear in mind that they require two clicks: One to open the ad like an email, and a second click through to the website.
So, you need to nail both the ad in the user’s inbox and the email content to get them through to your website.
Let’s conclude with Nick Lafferty’s words: Succeeding in digital marketing is all about iteration, and no strategy works forever. But for now, the action item for you is to keep testing new creatives, embrace machine learning and use automated bidding, especially Google’s Target CPA.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
- MANYCHAT: Live Chat, Omni-channel presence, smart notifications, automation pauses, conversion assignment, and more: the ManyChat app for Android is here.
- GOOGLE: Portfolio bidding on Google has now expanded to smart bidding with Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value.
- SEO: A closer look at Google’s Interesting Finds feature in SERPs, along with tips on how you can use it to drive more mobile users to your website.
- FACEBOOK: Facebook is launching Community Accelerator to help Group Admins boost activity in groups.
- SOCIAL MEDIA: Some Facebook, Instagram and Twitter engagement benchmarks by industry.
- CHATBOTS: Use ManyChat’s Smart Delay tool in a more effective way by testing shorter intervals for follow up messaging.
BRAIN TEASER
What English word retains the same pronunciation, even after you take away four of its five letters?
You can find the solution by clicking here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Look who’s back, back again
You might be able to guess the right answer to our brain teaser today, but you won’t guess this.
It’s one of the smallest known dinosaurs, in the shape of a bird-like skull trapped inside 99M year old amber.
This stunning new discovery could shed some light on how small birds evolved from dinosaurs, which were often bigger.
“It’s the weirdest fossil I’ve ever been lucky enough to study. I just love how natural selection ends up producing such bizarre forms. We are also super lucky this fossil survived to be discovered 99M years later.”
The new species, called Oculudentavis Khaungraae, appears to have dealt with the challenges life threw at it in some unusual ways.
The spoon-shaped eye bones forming a cone means they had exceptional vision, while a surprisingly large number of teeth suggests they were true predators despite only being big enough to eat insects.
This finding is exciting because it gives us a window into the type of small animals that lived in tropical forests during the age of the dinosaurs.
Interestingly, the amber from Myanmar is thought to have formed on an ancient island arc.